Snow White and the Huntman isn’t just Universal’s entry in the madcap race to produce a film that updates or otherwise reinterprets the classic story of Snow White. The movie, which stars Kristin Stewart, Chris Hemsworth, Charlize Theron and a whole host of wonderful actors as the dwarfs, is intended to kick off a series of movies.

It’s meant to be the first in a series of films. This story will end, but there will be questions remaining for these three characters.

He also explained the basic approach of the film,

We retain the basic story in the same way we retain the basic story of Alice, a young girl meant to be the queen who is cast out… The Huntsman is a mercenary, in the sense that he’s a guy who is very able in the woods, more able than most anyone. His job is to capture runaway girls, who are all fleeing the kingdom because of the queen. He’s a nondescript bounty hunter, as we first meet him… [Snow White] starts out not a damsel in distress, but innocent, and after 11 years of imprisonment by the Evil Queen, she escapes and learns the ways of a warrior in the woods

How does that lead into a trilogy of films that will, in the end, have anything to do with Snow White? It probably doesn’t, but this first film properly develops the characters I suppose I can see Universal milking another movie or two out of it. The fact that the very idea of that simply earns a shrug and “oh, OK,” shows just how far we’ve fallen down into the hole of dunderheaded movie business decisions.

Refreshing your memory on who’s who: on the dwarf front, Ian McShane is Caesar, the eldest. Stephen Graham is Nero, the angry one. Eddie Izzard is Tiberius, the biggest and burliest. Bob Hoskins is the blind Constantine. Toby Jones is the timid Claudius. And Ray Winstone and Eddie Marsan are the twins Trajan and Hadrian. Lily Cole plays Greta and Sam Spruell plays Finn, the Queen’s henchman sent to kill the Huntsman and Snow White. Sam Claflin plays the Prince.